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Celebrating Australian Music

28 Nov 2016

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Australia produces some of the best contemporary music in the world. Our musicians, composers and songwriters have had a huge impact globally, with Australia’s unique sound continuing to be critically acclaimed and commercially successful.

Australian music has had a huge impact on the world and boasts a talented bounty of musicians, composers, bands and songwriters. From the international success of pop acts like Sia and Five Seconds of Summer, to the classic Australian bands like The Easybeats or INXS – Australians have made and continue to make a global impression with their music.

To celebrate the success of Australian music, Australia Unlimited has put together a playlist of Australian musicians making their mark internationally.

International success for Australian artists

Aside from writing or co-writing global hits for Christina Aguilera, David Guetta, Beyonce, Rihanna and Flo-Rida, Sia’s own albums and singles have hit great heights internationally. In 2014, Sia’s sixth solo album 1000 Forms of Fear debuted at number one on the US Billboard Album chart. In 2016, she celebrated her first US Hot 100 number one single with Cheap Thrills and she has received five Grammy Award nominations.

Melbournian James Gabriel Keogh is better known as Vance Joy. After taking out Triple J’s Hottest 100 poll in Australia in 2013, his song Riptide went on to reach number one on both the Alternative and Rock airplay charts in the US and a Top 10 single in the UK, Ireland, Germany and Austria.

Courtney Barnett was nominated for Best New Artist at the 2016 Grammy Awards and for International Female Solo Artist at the 2016 Brit Awards. She’s performed on many US TV shows including Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. In August 2016, US President Barack Obama released a list of his favourite summer songs, which included Courtney’s single Elevator Operator.

Sounds Australia, Australia’s music export platform, has supported over 700 Australian artists, at 53 different international events in 54 cities across 20 countries, resulting in 1292 unique international performance opportunities for Australian artists since 2009.

Flume – a 25-year-old electronic record producer and DJ has released two internationally successful albums. Flume’s 2016 release Skin debuted at number one in Australia and New Zealand, number eight in the US and number 25 in the UK.

Tame Impala have become a global name. They’ve won a BRIT Award and have been nominated for Grammy Awards for both of their albums. Their latest album Currents, released in July 2015, hit number one in Australia and the Netherlands, number three in the UK and number four in the US.

Brisbane indie-pop band Sheppard’s huge hit single Geronimo reached the top 10 in Austria, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and Poland. Their album debuted at number 31 on the US Billboard Album chart.